1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cattle stanchions, and more particularly to cattle stanchions that close automatically to captively retain cattle.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the cattle industry, occasions arise wherein it is necessary and desirable to provide spaced positions, stalls or stations to be occupied by cattle wherein the cattle are retained in those positions in a captive manner. The most prominently occasioned instance, wherein cattle are retained in spaced stations, is wherein cattle are fed on an intermittent basis and it is desired to feed each individual animal a metered or allocated amount. To ensure that each individual animal obtains its fair share and no more or no less than other of the animals, some of which may exhibit aggressive tendencies in feeding, it becomes necessary to provide stanchions in order to captively retain each individual animal in a selected position during feeding or other process which is to be individually accomplished on each of the animals.
The most common means of ensuring appropriate feeding of cattle is by the utilization of stanchion devices wherein the stanchions provide individual places or positions which are occupied by an individual animal and wherein the individual animal is locked in that position or retained in a captive relationship with regard to the stanchion. The stanchions ordinarily employ upper and lower horizontal members having spaced swing bars affixed therebetween with adequate support posts to support the stanchions and wherein the swing bars when in the open position, define spaced openings or positions into which an individual animal may enter for feeding and/or other purposes. Once the swing bar is moved to the closed position, the individual animal's head is retained captively within the stanchion structure and cannot remove its head prior to the stanchions or more specifically, the individual swing bars, being opened. Some animals are skittish or fearful of being approached by human beings and thus, once they have entered and occupied a spaced position, the swing bar may not be able to be closed without frightening the animal which would withdraw from the occupied position and not be captively retained therein. In other instances, in order to conserve on the amount of human labor, it is desirable to be able to open a plurality of swing bars at one time by a single actuator member to accomplish this purpose from a point removed from and central to the plurality of stanchions involved.
Various self-locking stanchions have been proposed utilizing single actuator members whereby the swing bars may be opened in unison but for the most part, such stanchion structures have been either complicated, expensive to build and install, or have been deficient in the respect that individual cattle retained in the individual stanchions were able to open the individual locking mechanisms, thereby defeating the intent and purpose of such stanchion structures. With the herein disclosed invention, a locking stanchion is provided which is incapable, for all intents and purposes, of being opened by cattle, whether intentionally or inadvertently, and wherein an existing stanchion structure may be easily modified to provide a stanchion construction having the attributes of the herein disclosed invention. Additionally, the stanchion structure of this invention provides simple, straightforward means of assuring selective, captive retention of cattle in a stanchion structure for feeding or other purposes and wherein the individual swing bars making up the stanchion structure may be individually operated or operated in unison to be moved into the open or the closed position.